


opened my eyes, fell out the sky

by Zafaria



Category: Wizard101
Genre: Wizard101 - Freeform, stunning really, the fact that i've written transcendentalist garbage EVERY DAY since i got back for this game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23512522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zafaria/pseuds/Zafaria
Summary: "...tried to remember, but there was nothing."The hero walks alone at night and makes the longest journey yet.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	opened my eyes, fell out the sky

To get to the stuffy grey-brick tower that housed my dorm, I had to walk. I had to walk, from where I was. 

I split my nights, spending some staring at my own face in the white-blue crystals in the underground of Avalon, and I spent some time sitting in base camp on the bottom of the sandy seafloor (I would walk to the quiet corner of base, next to the half wall, and lean on that pile of sand stacked in that corner. I would allow my clothes to get ruffled, the sand to work its way between the fibers and into the pores on my skin.). And I spent some time with the dark trees of the Zocalo looming over me, stuck by the door in that cave, staring at all the little blue rectangular mosaic tiles that ran out towards the plaza and tried to guide me, nudge me along that way. But, I knew better. 

I knew that outside of the cave, the other half of all those palm trees that I didn’t see, was burned to a wire husk. That the tiles were all crushed and cracked in the plaza. That the fountains didn’t run, the smoke still hung in the air even if I willed it to dissipate time and time again.

The journey back to Ravenwood was a daunting one. Coming back before was a homecoming, an eager experience. I’d walk in during the daytime, I’d make my announcements and updates to the Headmaster, then I’d go sit in my dorm and fidget until I was called on again.

Now, I shirked from sight. I only ever came back at nighttime. I did not need to report to the Headmaster; this was moot. The flicker of red dust was so visible, so vibrant in the sky. More than anything, I did not want people to see  _ me _ . Failure in my trembling, pale hands; the way I had to hold railings and stone halfways; how I couldn’t hardly get my hand around a doorknob to open it and sulk inside; the porcelain, vacant stare and the muddled mind; the knees that sometimes flittered and popped and rolled; the missing ends of sentences in conversation...

When I did come back, finally, the streetlights cast yellow rectangles across the undisturbed sidewalk. Some of the attic lights of the houses were on, but all the ground-floor lights, the windows where people would have been able to witness me, were off. And I was thankful.

I was only noticed by those warm streetlights, between rows of silent, sleeping houses. The world was still; the noise of the birds and voices and even the crickets had slunk out of the air, sitting on the ground with the dew, waiting until morning tided over to rise again. There was only a slight rushing sound, the sound of the world still moving on. There was a coziness in that moment that I craved to feel again. I knew by now, moments in solitude would never be comfortable again. Worse than the awkward silence that mulled between a fallen-out friend and you; or even a despicable person and you; was the silence between despicable you, and you.

And did I ever despise myself. 

Did I enjoy walking home at night like that, or, well,  _ tolerate _ walking home at night like that, because the empty streets and quelled voices and the breathtaking darkness reflected something of myself? Maybe I had it wrong, maybe it was the other way around. The streets were quiet and the people hidden and the air paused because I was walking in; I was only ever moved to walk at night when I could tell that the world wanted to avoid me, that the stars above wanted to burn me, that the night-creatures hidden in the trees wanted to peer into me, peeling me apart from the inside out. I didn’t make the meaning of the dark streets, the dark streets made the meaning of me.

I crawled back to my dorm. There was only a heavy feeling as my soles faintly echoed across the pavement. I thought that with every next step, maybe I would just collapse, or sink through the ground. 

During the days, I would lie in bed, and sometimes I wouldn't, but I was unable to stir. Sometimes physically, but always emotionally and mentally. I was asleep sometimes, awake some other times. I got up early, I went to bed early, I got up late, I went to bed late, I stayed up, I stayed up. Revisited the same conversations and same memories. I talked in circles, I talked in circles. I watched for signals. Drove myself to misery, brought myself back again in an infinitesimal moment of joy, then made a game out of slowly prodding myself back into my pit. 

Sometimes I’d read, but I couldn’t focus on the words as they fluttered away once I had finished reading them. I tried to write some ideas, an apology letter with no addressee. The mail list would’ve been too numerous, and how can you send a letter to hundreds of people whose names you never collected, who you never knew? I burned every single note, every word. The grotesque parts of me hoped that all ash ended the same place, that my half-worked and grasping attempts would fizzle and go and reach the same place as all of Azteca. That someone out there somewhere still would’ve known that I was trying, and it wasn’t and would never be enough, but I was trying so, so hard.

These days, I did not announce things in the Commons and I did not fidget in my dorm. Time could not pass quickly enough, but I rarely found better ways to make it move than being stuck in broken cycles. Writing and burning and writing and burning. Standing and picking and sitting and standing and picking and sitting. Sleeping and waking, crying and nothing. Nothing I could do ever comforted myself, and I always was doing the same things.

Now, I learned to dread being called on. I was finally at the point where I had made too large a mistake. Dispelling wayward, but ultimately good souls, freeing drakes, playing into inter-family wars, not reaching Mirror Lake fast enough. All of those were early signs of my shortcomings, hints of fundamental structural failures. But all were excusable, to an extent. What would we have hoped for anyways? A child to have not been so blindly trusting of all creatures in the first endeavours outside the comfort of school friends and family? Longer legs and larger lungs to scale mountains in less time? My errors now were much more grievous, more accumulated. I lost an entire world.

So I sat in that dorm, the lights always off, and waited in my seat and avoided people for as long as I possibly could, knowing all too well that I would soon return again, that the still air and morning noise would rise again, and life would shamble onwards.


End file.
